tygerland.net

Martin Kettle has an arresting piece in today’s Guardian. He argues that while the left often cry that the political parties are all now centrist ones, and that every candidate is essentially the same, in reality they are markedly different, offering very different choices. He goes on to explain how this complaint has dogged liberalism throughout history, explaining that the elections of George W. Bush and Richard Nixon were similarly dismissed as no real choice for the electorate.

This grievance is not wholly a liberal trait. Conservatives are also vocal in their frustration as David Cameron rolls out his oxymoronic vision of Liberal Conservatism. Those of the right and the left, who dally at the fringes of radicalism, will obviously find themselves disenfranchised as the political parties battle for the limited political oxygen in the centre.

Kettle is right and he’s wrong.

Each of the political parties is selling the same vision of England. They all claim they will empower you with choice in the Welfare system. They all claim that they’ll put more police on the streets and more teachers in our schools. They all claim that they can reform the civil service and get better results, and they all acknowledge that the NHS is a sacred cow that mustn’t be sacrificed.

However, what we get when we actually elect a party into power, as Kettle rightly points out, can be very different. Who would have believed that Labour would have introduced tuition fees? Who would have thought the “compassionate conservative”, George W. Bush, would have become one of the most rightwing presidents for 70-years?

What would a David Cameron government actually be like? He may come across as a moderniser and a dashing member of the North London liberati; yet his party, including - the Penfold to his Dangermouse - George Gideon Osborne, are still the same Thatcherite rightwingers that lost Major, Hague, and Howard successive elections.

The Tories haven’t changed, they’ve merely rebranded.

Look at the policy reviews that Cameron had key Tories produce. Each one was lauded in gestation, and then quietly shelved when they turned out to be old Tory solutions to a new set of problems. Solutions the country decided a decade ago they weren’t interested in.

Kettle is right. The political parties and the media are guilty of poor communication with regard to the differences between our politicians – or maybe, very good communication in the case of the parties, who sometimes have a vested interest in misrepresenting their policies.

Because if we don’t know what sort of politics we’re voting for, what is the point of democracy?